


The Butterfly

by euterpe42



Category: Mozart l'Opéra Rock - Mozart/Baguian & Guirao
Genre: Gen, Teen Girl Solidarity, dystopian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 12:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14189304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euterpe42/pseuds/euterpe42
Summary: I wasn't ready, when the law passed. But I would never let them catch me off guard again.





	The Butterfly

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece to C'est bientôt la fin, set in the same dystopian universe. This is a prequel, of sorts, focusing on Nannerl's character (who will appear later on in CBLF) and a bit more about what women's lives are like in the CBLF-verse, in honor of April Filles. Enjoy!

Of course I remember when the law passed. How could I not? I was 15, and my life was already an ongoing metamorphosis--my limbs too long, my skirts too short, my heart too soft and my ambitions too high. But when the law passed, it felt like my body and soul were ripped apart, rent down the seams.

I was idly doodling butterflies in the corners of my tablet screen when my math teacher was interrupted by an announcement over the intercom. "All female students, please report to the auditorium immediately." There was a brief pause, then a flurry of whispers and murmurs from the girls all around me. My math teacher put his stylus down, his eyes softening sadly. "You'd best take all of your things," he said. "It's been a pleasure to teach you." 

We had all been following the news; we knew what was coming. I had watched the debates in Congress, until I grew so angry that I hurled my phone across the room with a scream, causing my father to lock it in his desk drawer for the rest of the evening. There had been protests downtown that I had wanted to go to, though my father wouldn't let me, and rumors of an impending lawsuit the news commentators claimed wouldn't go anywhere. None of that mattered anymore. I shoved my tablet and stylus into my backpack. Alisha Clark, who sat next to me, had started to shake a little. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it as all of the girls slowly filed out of the class and to the auditorium. As the door shut behind me, I glanced back at my math teacher, beginning to lecture again to the boys who remained in their seats, hunched over their tablets.

Our principal--a hesitant, balding, non-confrontational man--was the one to deliver the news. He stood at a podium on the auditorium stage, clutching the sides like they could protect him from our our anger and grief. From the second row, I could see the sweat that beaded up on his forehead. "As you may know," he began, "the Protect Girls' Purity Act passed this morning, and has been signed into law by the President."

He paused expectantly. The more patriotic and rule-abiding girls among us responded, "Praise." I had not been much of a rule-breaker before--my father had always been too strict for me to chance detention--but I felt like if I opened my mouth, I would only be able to scream. I clenched my hands into fists.

"As such," the principal continued, "girls are now barred from schools, colleges, and universities after eighth grade."

There was a choked sob from across the auditorium. I didn't need to look up to know who it was. Rachel Liebowitz had known since she was seven that she wanted to be a doctor. She had been on the front lines of every protest, had watched all of the hearings and debates and texted every girl she knew with updates, had been unable to stop tearing up at odd moments for the past two weeks, when it became clear the bill was going to pass. Now there was no way she was going to medical school, let alone get her undergraduate degree or even finish high school. 

My nails bit into my palms, turning them sticky with blood. 

"It's regrettable that it's come to this," the principal said. "I've enjoyed meeting all of you, and I wish you all the best. You can call your parents now to pick you up. For those of you who take the bus, we'll be running a special route home in twenty minutes leaving from the front parking lot." He swallowed. "I am sorry," he said finally, and stepped down from the podium.

There was silence for a beat, and I struggled to find air to breathe. Then, the room erupted. There was screaming, yelling, sobbing, chanting, every violent and bitter noise that could come out of a girl's throat. A guidance counselor escorted the principal out of the room; no adult dared to intervene with us. Decades of pent-up rage at the society we were born in bubbled up every single girl in that room. We clung to each other and cried. 

Above the noise, the voice of Daniela Ruiz--the captain of the debate team, Harvard-bound until today--rang out. "What do we do? What do we DO?" 

The blood stuck to my palms. What do we do? 

Alisha pressed her tear-stained face into my neck. What do we do? 

What do we do?

I kissed Alisha's forehead and untangled myself gently from her arms. I climbed up onto the folding auditorium seat nearest to me, and raised my bloody hands above my head. 

"What do we do?" I cried out to the girls who filled the auditorium. "They've kicked us out of school because they think it'll keep us down. That if we don't come here and let them teach us for eight hours a day that we'll become docile pets." I swallowed, acutely aware that with every word I spoke a target was forming upon my back. I opened my mouth and let my soul scream anyway. "We don't need them! We don't need their schools! We don't need their ranking systems pitting us against each other and we don't need their non-stop surveillance keeping us in line and we don't need their propaganda telling us what to think. We are strong enough on our own, and we are even stronger together! So what do we do? I'll tell you what I'm going to do: I'm going to go home, and then I'm going to spend the rest of my life making them regret they ever tried to silence us!" 

The room erupted, and I stepped off the chair into Alisha's arms. She kissed me on the cheek and I promised her I would text her as often as possible. I spent the next twenty minutes until we were supposed to meet the bus getting the contact information of every girl I didn't already have the phone number or username of. Then I, alongside the rest of this newly-formed army, pushed open the doors to the auditorium and marched outside.

While waiting for the bus stop, Mae Tan let me borrow her miniature bottle of hand sanitizer and some tissues to try and scrub the blood off my palms. I cleaned myself off, breathed deeply, and composed myself. When the bus reached my stop, I said goodbye to every other girl on the bus before calmly stepping off, walking to my house and unlocking my door.

By the time my father had come home, I had carefully steeled my face into a pleasant mask. I was disappointed, I told him, but I understood that these things happen and that what's done is done. He nodded approvingly, and told me he was glad there would finally be some help around the house after my mother had died. My brother Wolfgang was indignant, and ready to spiral into a rant, but I shushed him, saying that I didn't really mind, biting my tongue until I could taste copper. His anger was sweet, but it wouldn't help matters. 

I texted Alisha and scrolled innocuously through Facebook without posting anything. Then, I set up an encrypted group chat with my closest friends, pulled out my flashdrive with the copy of TOR I had gotten from Aditi Chadha, and dove online.

Every useful link I found, I sent to the encrypted chat, and they sent their finds back to me. Together, we gave ourselves the education we had been deprived of. I spent just as much time taking care of the house as would keep my father from suspicion. The rest of the time, I crammed my brain full of whatever I could learn that would help me destroy the regime once and for all. 

Rachel Liebowitz did become a doctor: she met an abortion provider driven underground after Roe v. Wade was repealed, and learned from her how to safely end a woman's pregnancy from inside a hidden safe house. 

Daniela Ruiz married one of the last remaining Democratic congressmen, and outwardly became the model of a perfect senator's wife. But I had it on good authority that she handled at least half of his job. 

Aditi Chadha filled flash drives full of books--textbooks, novels, comics, and of course text files telling you how to get past the government's surveillance technology--and delivered them via a secret and elaborate distribution network to girls across the country who had to leave school.

Mae Tan's family moved to Canada, where Mae became an immigration attorney helping American refugees get asylum across the border.

The last I heard from Alisha Clark, she had gone undercover to help those refugees make it across the border. Every day that I didn't hear from her, my heart broke a little and I prayed she was still safe undercover.

And me? I buried myself so far into the internet that I learned to play it like a musical instrument: to form the right chords that allowed me to gain access to a system, to add just the right melody to my voice to convince a customer service representative that my husband had lost access to his password, and I just needed to reset his account for him while he was at work.... 

I broke into the bank accounts of the 1% and transferred their money to online fundraisers for medical bills and school supplies. I shut down more governmental websites than I could count. I gained access to the email accounts of White House staffers, and anonymously posted their emails where they trash-talked the President.

I became The Butterfly, the country's most infamous hacker.

And when Wolfgang reached out to me to help him start a revolution, I was ready.


End file.
